One of the cases outgoing Williamson County District Attorney Jana Duty bragged about was the cold case conviction of Rex Allen Nisbett for the murder of his estranged wife. Indeed, the arrest of Nisbett is one of only three instances for which Duty’s office bothered to post a press release.
That conviction fell apart this week:
The state 3rd Court of Appeals has reversed the murder conviction of a man found guilty of killing his wife in 1991 in her Williamson County apartment.
Rex Nisbett was sentenced to 42 years in prison in 2014 after a jury found him guilty of the murder of 29-year-old Vicki Lynn Nisbett. Her body hasn’t been found.
The court’s ruling Thursday said prosecutors failed to provide sufficient evidence that Rex Nisbett killed his wife. They were in the process of getting a divorce.
The 3rd Court of Appeals didn’t make any ruling concerning Nisbett’s innocence, said his lawyer, Keith Lauerman. He said the court simply reversed the murder conviction based on insufficient evidence.
Lauerman said he believes Rex Nisbett is innocent and was “relieved” by the court’s ruling. He said the jury disregarded the testimony of a witness who said he had seen Vicki Lynn Nisbett alive a few days after she was “allegedly killed.”
Rex Nisbett could be released from prison if the Williamson County district attorney’s office decides not to appeal the ruling to the Court of Criminal Appeals. The district attorney’s office has 30 days to appeal. In case of appeal, the district attorney’s office can ask a district judge to issue a warrant and have Nisbett sent back to the Williamson County Jail.
District Attorney Jana Duty said she hadn’t decided Thursday on whether to appeal and was consulting with other district attorneys, county attorneys and the Texas District and County Attorneys Association.
University of Texas law professor George Dix, a criminal law expert, said it was “quite rare for convictions to be reversed for insufficiency of the evidence given that we trust juries to decide whether the state has met its burden of proof.”
Duty is out of office come January 1st, so this might be yet another mess she’ll leave to incoming Williamson County District Attorney Shawn Dick…